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Some would market their careful manufacturing process while others would make a big deal about the water’s alkaline levels. But when it comes to real life situations, a person rushing to a convenience store’s fridge only wants his or her thirst quenched, and then the deciding factor all boils down to the customer’s instinct to pick the bottle with the most eye-catchy label.

Elements of a Good Bottle Label

Bottle labels are made to market and inform buyers about the product. Designing one can be complicated, but with the following elements present, you should be able to come up with an effective bottle label.

Branding: The defining part of the label, branding is comprised of the logo, product name, and the company name. It defines the product itself and it is what the consumers will remember. The brand gives the product an identity that establishes a connection to the customers.

Product description: It is a brief piece of information regarding the product. The headline of the product description comes in the form of a tagline or phrase that tells people a reason to buy. Supporting details of the product description share the company’s values and beliefs regarding their product.

Graphic Effects: Attention can be easily attained with the use of an appealing design on the label. A good design will make a product pop from the rest, and this is most especially important given that competing products are placed on the same shelf.

Consistency: A lot of bottled beverages can come in different flavors. But this does not mean that bottles for each flavor should have a completely different design from one another. Come up with the main design and tweak minor elements to create variation while still maintaining consistency. Knowing that your design is consistent is when people will still be able to recognize the product regardless of what flavor variation the bottle got.

Additional Information: The company details, barcodes, ingredients of the product, and nutritional data are embedded on the opposite side of the main part of the label where branding can be found. Some information printed on this part are required by the product regulation agencies in the spirit of company transparency and for the sake of customer safety, so it must not be missed.

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Steps to Make a Great Bottle Label

The following steps are the processes involved in designing a bottle label for commercial products.

Know the product: Bottle labels showcase the company’s intention of the product to the consumers. Be familiar with the purpose of the product to help you visualize the design of your label.

Set size and other specifications: Keep in mindthe product’s bottle shape, label dimensions, and label material to set your parameters in conceptualizing your design. Label materials come in a different finish, like matte and glossy, and colors, such as tin, gold, and silver, that can create adverse effects on the final look of your design. Be aware of the company’s vision regarding the label to gauge your aesthetic freedom in designing.

Choose fonts carefully: Although it has been known that the use of Comic Sans and Papyrus in product labels is considered a mortal sin in designing, picking a font that makes the product name unreadable is a debatable act worthy of capital punishment. Consumers get attracted based on the presentation of the product name on your label and read it afterward, so make sure to strike a balance between appeal and readability when deciding on what font to use.

Conceptualize, then realize: Prepare a rough draft of your design and try out different layouts. The perfect bottle label is not born on the first try, rather, it is made of discarded sketches and design attempts. Decide on what colors to use and make sure that they complement each other and think if adding more graphics and images to your label will not make it look clumpy.

Check for errors: Brand recognition is attained from an effective label design. Before sending them out, make sure that the brand name, company details, and company logo are spelled and laid out correctly on your label.

Tips for a Great Bottle Label

Crash conventions: A good bottle label makes the product stand out even when it is placed among its brand competition. Do not be afraid to pop out colors and experiment in label shapes if it helps to achieve the company’s need of making the product a gold needle among the brown haystack.

Print the label directly on the bottle: Consumers recycling bottles make up for a good marketing strategy. As they bring the bottle around, more people will see the brand on the label and be familiar with it. However, this is only possible if the label has adhered durably on the bottle. As most labels that are printed on paper tend to peel off, it is advisable to print it directly on the bottle to keep it intact for a considerable amount of time. The only caveat for printing it on the bottle, though, is that it costs more in production.

Stamp company information: Let the label on your product be a medium between the company and the consumers. Adding the company contact details will enable consumers to communicate their concerns that will help build rapport and data for planning and research.

Use white space: White space is the area void of any design in a graphical work. It is a staple in every designing endeavor and proves to be very effective when it comes to designs that involve marketing, such as bottle label. In the bottle label, white space groups categories of information so the consumers can ingest the details with ease, aside from giving the consumer’s eyes a breather when they are perusing it.

Types of Bottle Labels

Commercial Bottle Labels: The most common type of bottle label, commercial labels have adhered to consumer products. They bear the product brand and possess attractive design to drive in sales. Commercial bottle labels are carefully conceptualized and highly researched, for the success of the product almost entirely depends on them.

Holiday Bottle Labels: During holidays, companies with bottled products often replace their regular labels with special ones to appeal to consumers. For one, wine bottles can be seen bearing the red color in their special labels during Christmas season so people will be enticed in buying them as a gift.

Customized Bottle Labels: These bottle labels have more personal touch as they are put into bottles that are handed out as favors during personal occasions. They don’t usually follow the conventions in commercial labels as they primarily work as a greeting card, prioritizing aesthetics and message of the giver rather than marketing strategies and product information.

Labels found in other products like lotion and perfumes depend on the size of the bottle and do not have a standard size.

Bottle Label FAQs

Are bottle labels limited to rectangular forms?

Bottle labels can come in different shapes, but the rectangular labels are the most popular. You are always free to come up with your own as long as it does not make the expected information from it be any less readable and harder to understand.

What details are to be put in labels found in beverages?

Most food bureaus require food products, including beverages, to bear all the ingredients used in the label. The ingredients are listed on the left arranged in descending order of content dominance and the respective nutritional percentages are indicated on the next column.

What do proof percentages that are found in alcoholic beverage labels mean?

Proof indicated in the labels of alcoholic beverages is a representation of the alcohol content of the drink. In the United States, it is always twice the actual alcohol percentage of the drink by volume. So if a certain gin bottle indicated 80 proof, it means that it has 40% alcohol in it.

Although the success of a product depends heavily on the customer’s satisfaction that has accumulated over time, this tower of trust is firstly built on the consumers’ choice of picking up the bottle because they were unconsciously attracted by the bottle label—the seemingly mundane moment that has made all the difference.